Samsung CEO Boo-Keun Yoon in his IFA 2014 keynote address discusses future of Smart Home. This is the full transcript of the full speech… The event took place from September 05 to 10, 2014 in Berlin.
Speakers:
Jens Heithecker – IFA Executive Director
Lucy Alexandar – IFA
Boo-Keun Yoon – Present and CEO, Samsung
Ken Larson – MIT Media Lab
Alex Hopkinson – CEO, SmartThings
Jens Heithecker – IFA Executive Director
Good morning. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Warm welcome to IFA. Warm welcome to the IFA international keynotes. For those in the audience who missed the IFA press conference, I have only two statements today.
2014 IFA celebrates its 90th anniversary in its best shape ever. Never before in IFA’s history have IFA attracted so many exhibitors. And today IFA is worldwide, the largest meeting point for all the international experts, for the invitees, international press of the consumer electronics and home appliance industry. IFA was founded in 1924, much younger is Samsung, it was founded in 1969 and I remember well the very first time my first meeting with Samsung at IFA 2001. We were talking about the future of the show, the future of the industry and of course we were talking about the future of Samsung.
At that time in 2001, Samsung acquired a booth of merely 800 square meters but I learned about the ambitious aim to get the number one position, to get the number one position in all relevant markets. What happened afterwards, you’ve already known it. Samsung has become one of the most important exhibitors and partner of IFA. And I would like to take this time to thank you for the long-term partnership.
This year IFA has a landmark, our new exhibition and conference hall, CityCube that you’re sitting here in right now. For Samsung and IFA, this new landmark leads to the next higher level and we are deeply impressed by the new exhibition of Samsung in this new CityCube. And this I call it a real housewarming party. And so it’s only fitting that Samsung will open our international keynote stage in the CityCube here today.
And it’s our honor that the keynote will be delivered by one of the most influential, most powerful and most successful leaders in our industry and that we have the opportunity to share Samsung visions and ambitions for the future. I wish you all a successful IFA and now please enjoy Samsung’s presentation. Thank you.
Lucy Alexandar – IFA
Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to IFA here in Berlin. This show has always been about innovation and you will have understood that better than Albert Einstein. He spoke here as we heard 84 years ago, August 1930, the opening of what was then known as the Grosse Deutsche Funk-Ausstellung – the German Radio Show. Today, as we know, it’s IFA.
Now Einstein talked about innovation, especially the invention of the radio and how it would affect society. And at the time the radio was still a fairly new thing. In fact, then Einstein called on the public to appreciate that value of innovation and understand how dramatically it really could change our lives, how little and yet how much have changed. Yes, the tinkering of scientists can still drive innovation but really true innovation today is centered on humans. It’s focused on their behavior, their passions and their needs. And that is what makes innovation meaningful, how it transforms our lives and the way we live.
And as we’re about to hear and see that most dramatic change is yet to come.
[Video Presentation]
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage President and CEO of Samson Electronics Mr. BK Yoon.
Boo-Keun Yoon – Present and CEO, Samsung
Guten Morgen. Good morning. It’s great to be back here at IFA. This show always reminds us how much technology has improved our way of living at an amazing speed and beyond recognition. Remember it was in 1882 that the first light bulbs lit our homes. Soon electricity brought us not just bright light but also power and the first electric appliances.
Look at the difference they have made. What would you do without refrigerator or washing machine? Radio and television also revolutionized our world, setting popular culture and the mass communication. Digital technology brought next wave of innovation. Computers and mobile devices, they made us more productive and more connected than ever.
Today technology continues to develop at lightning speed. Connectivity will soon be truly seamless. Sensors and devices are linking up to share information. They become context-aware connect the dots and make our lives truly smart. The data this produces will give us all powerful insights to work smarter and to live better.
Taken together it will trigger a quantum leap of innovation. I am certain that it will touch every industry, every company, every job. Just think how will it affect you and your family? The biggest change, the biggest transformation it will happen in our homes, it will come at a speed we can barely imagine. And actually it’s started and it’s giving us new habits. All this, it’s changing our expectations of what technology can do for our 3homes.
Most importantly, though, the technology we see in our home today, it’s only the beginning. The change here will be much, much more dramatic. That’s why today I want to talk to you about Samsung vision for the Home of the Future.
When we talk about bringing the future to our homes, I need to make one key point. In our industry, we often get very excited about technical details. They are not that important. I think it’s time for a reality check. Let’s take a look.
[Video Presentation]
So you have just heard it. It’s obvious really technology must not be overwhelming. It must fit into people’s lifestyles. It must anticipate and meet their needs. Nothing else is important. Of course, these needs develop all the time. That’s because of changes in our culture, society and environment.
Earlier this year at CES in Las Vegas, I spoke about four megatrends shaping our world.
First, connectivity which brings us together, which empowers us. Second, urbanization – our cities are growing and as they do so, they need to get smarter and our homes need to adapt to high-density living. Third, technology can help people to live more comfortable, independent lives in their old age. And fourth, there are new risks from disease, climate change and war. These mega-trends are changing the world and they make new demands on our homes. That’s why we want our homes to do more than ever before.
We want the home of the future to be protective, flexible and responsive. But what does this mean? To be protective, the home needs to provide us with physical security and emotional comfort. To be flexible, the home must take smart use of what space we have in crowded cities. It must adjust to new lifestyles that blend work, learning and life. And we need a home that is truly responsive to its families’ needs with technology that senses, learns, responds to our behavior.
Every person, every family has different needs. Therefore each requires different levels of protection, flexibility and responsiveness. That’s why there will not be one home of the future. There will be billion homes of the future. We at Samsung have researched this a lot for many years in cities, in rural areas, around the world. We’ve observed people. We’ve interviewed experts. We’ve analyzed trends and spotted fascinating changes.
When we recently did a study to see how the days of families are changing. We consulted 34 experts from anthropologists to teachers, from architects to day-care workers. 29 families in Germany, France, the United States, Brazil, and across Asia. 11 Samsung lifestyle researchers for regional insights around the world, and we’ve polled nearly 30,000 people in 24 countries. This kind of research shows us how diverse our lifestyles are. It helps us understand the center of lives – the home. And it gives us deep insights into people’s passions and these. Let’s take a look at a few examples from around the world.
[Video Presentation]
As you can see, each home is tailor-made and grows with the needs of the people living there. But let’s hear from one of the world’s top experts on responsive housing. He is somebody who truly understands this dynamic relationship and share our vision.
Lucy Alexandar – IFA
Ladies and gentlemen please welcome renowned architect and principal research scientist at MIT Media Lab, Ken Larson.
Ken Larson – MIT Media Lab
Good morning. Good morning, Berlin and thank you BK for having me here.
At the MIT Media Lab, we’re on a mission to reinvent the critical systems that are necessary to enable high-performance creative entrepreneurial high-density cities. We’re looking at new food networks, mobility networks, energy networks but perhaps the most important system is to develop a new model for housing.
I’d like to tell you a little bit about our CityHome project with a focus on transformable hyper-efficient personalized housing, specifically for cities. Now this is so critical because as BK said we live in an era of extreme urbanization. 90% of population growth will take place in cities.
Even more interesting to me, almost all the innovation will take place in cities. 93%, for example, of patented inventions will happen in cities. But the world is not flat in this respect. Most of the innovation is taking place in a few cities, Japan, Korea, Northern Europe, the coast of the US that have the qualities the young people are attracted to. The problem with these cities is the young people, the lifeblood of these cities are getting priced out of the market. Mayors are all looking for new solutions for housing that will allow their cities to remain competitive and attractive to young people.
So I challenged our researchers to think deeply about this problem and we realize that for thousands of years the home was the center of life. It was the center of entertainment, of health care, of learning, of work and then with industrialization things became centralized outside of the home. So your production was centralized in factories. Healthcare became centralized in hospitals. Learning took place mainly in schools rather than at the home. And entertainment increasingly was located in public spaces like theaters.
We live in a really interesting time right now because with new technologies, with ubiquitous sensing almost free, computation, telecommunications, the internet, the home is once again becoming the center of life. So we thought we would take on the challenge of creating responsive housing that was attractive to young people but would allow them to live in a very complete way and also for it to be tremendously fun in a small space. So I challenged our researchers to try to come up with a solution where a very small space could function as if it was two or three times larger.
So here you see an exercise space converting to an office space, maybe for a start-up, it converts to 2 guestrooms. When you need sleeping spaces it converts to an informal hang-out space. It opens up for a dinner party for 10 guests. It actually can be a party space. This is an animation, this is easy to deal with.
So then I challenged the researchers to find ways of actually realizing this. This is an early prototype of a RoboWall where you just move this heavy object. By the way that’s a Samsung monitor. It moves in this RoboWall.
But then we wanted to test it with people. So this is a Living Lab experiment, actual apartment where we have these transformable elements. The bed is tucked under this high-tech furniture package. We found that the young people actually when they go back to a conventional space, they say why can’t I just move that wall out of the way and open it up. Then we said well we need to work on solutions that are appropriate for a commercial developer.
So here this is the smallest apartment, that’s legal in New York City. 300 square feet, 28 square meters but it’s a large living room, the size that you might find in a very expensive penthouse but at night it converts to a bedroom. So the bed comes down, a larger bedroom that you would typically find in even an expensive apartment.
But then when needed, the bed goes up, the table comes down and you have a space for dinner party for 10 people or a start-up office where 10 workers can be there. Well, again that design is easy. We had to figure out how to implement that. So we built a series of prototypes. Again Living Lab experiments, in this case, this was a play area that can convert to a dining space. In fact, you can have the complete place settings.
But the challenge here was not just the mechatronics but how this – the kind of a system can be a node in the Internet of Things. In fact, we are thinking beyond that. This is the Internet of Things that create spaces that people occupy. In this case, a living room converts to a bedroom. We were looking at even lean management system. So unlike a Murphy bed or a sofa bed which takes a lot of work, you don’t even have to make the bed. It just goes out of the way.
But we thought, well, this isn’t really enough. So we need to really integrate in a more complete way the technology. So in this case, you have a 200 square foot apartment, about 19 square meters where a large bedroom will actually convert to an office space, 8-foot desk converts to a dining room, where six friends can enjoy a meal. It can convert to a larger living room. We have a very compact bathroom but the whole bathroom can open up. So you have a large walk-in bathroom and access to the shower. The kitchen space is very functional, it’s very compact but you can double the counter space, if you want to fix a meal.
We have the sensing capability to know where people are and what they’re doing, the activity recognition. So we can respond to them in real time but also using gesture control and voice and touch sensors to allow the configuration according to your needs and values.
So I really do believe that it is a societal imperative to develop this new model for housing. We’re just getting started. They will enable young people, elderly people, families, working-class people as well as rich people to live in the creative heart of the city. Thank you.
Boo-Keun Yoon – Present and CEO, Samsung
Many thanks, Ken. When I was an engineering student, I would have loved to have a flat like that.
Okay. What’s clear is that the home of the future is not about the technology. And it’s not about being smart and connected. It’s about working in a way so that you don’t notice the technology at work. It’s about giving you the right options at the right time. Above all, it’s about adapting to you but how exactly will the home of the future adapt to you?
First, it will be a Show Me home that makes complex data visible and useful, so that you can make better choices. For example, it will show you when to take your medicine, alert you to air pollution, or give you choices for saving energy.
Second, Know Me home that learns your needs and recognizes your lifestyle patterns. It’s a home that knows when your day starts. For example, it will turn on the lights and the coffee pot just in time.
Third, it will be a Tell Me home that proactively adjusts to your needs, and provides suggestions without being asked. Imagine a home that tells you there are leftover ingredients, and suggests a recipe to use them up.
So here we have the 3 key attributes of the future home. A Show Me, Know Me and Tell Me home that adapts to you. Ultimately, it will care for me and you. Yes, these are still early days for the home of the future. For many, it’s still just the vision. But change is coming and it is coming fast.
Just remember how quickly in just a few years, smartphone and tablets have changed our lives. I’m certain the Home of the Future will be woven into the fabric of our lives just as fast.
We, at Samsung, can take a leading role here. Our six lifestyle research labs, six product innovation teams, and six design centers across the globe give us deep insights into what people really want and need. And uniquely we do that across the whole range of consumer electronics from mobile solutions to TVs, from home appliances to healthcare. All these inform our innovation and the shapes our portfolio of products and services. And we’ve deepened this offering through corroboration with industry partners.
So let’s take a first glance at how Samsung will bring the future home.
[Video Presentation]
Okay. What’s clear, though, is that the home we just saw, each was distinct and adapted to each family’s very own lifestyle. You also saw a few of the technology we are working on to bring your future home, how each technology adapts to every home. The future you just saw is not something that’s far away. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a year or two, but it will be here you know it.
This future home, it looks after your health. It makes cooking a joy. It’s home that brings you together with people even when part apart. It’s home that matches the information from appliances, sensors and devices to create value and to fit your lifestyle. But this is key, there will not be one home of the future. And so each and every home will be different. Because it adapts to you and your lifestyle needs. This will not be a static home and it will be you who is shaping it.
We can turn this vision into reality but only if we as an industry work together. We will work with everybody who shares this vision because we want to make sure standards are open, loved and secured. We will open our own standards to accelerate this process and we are making sure that our devices and our own platform, with the third party devices services and platforms, we have started partnering with industry leaders such as the Open Interconnect Consortium, to create interconnected solutions and industry standards.
But our commitment to openness does not stop here. As you may have heard, we recently acquired the technology and talent of SmartThings, a leading open platform for the next generation smart home experience. In just over two years, SmartThings has created an active ecosystem of more than 1000 devices and 8,000 apps, created by its community of device makers, inventors and developers.
To tell you more, ladies and gentlemen please welcome to the stage Alex Hopkinson, CEO of SmartThings.
Alex Hopkinson – CEO, SmartThings
Thank you, BK and we’re so thrilled to be here, I can’t even tell you. For SmartThings, the goal has always been to turn every home into a smart home. The journey really started back in 2011 when my family and I arrived at a mountain house that we have out in the mountains of Colorado. And the place was a rack when we showed up. It turned out a pipe had frozen and burst and everything in the house was coated in ice, and the cost to repair the house was overwhelming.
And at that moment I thought to myself, you know, it’s staggering that I know what my friends are doing on Facebook but how could I not know what’s happening in my own home. If I’d just known I could’ve prevented it. And why hasn’t anybody invented a solution that would make it simple for me to know what’s happening in my home and get an alert when something goes wrong.
That’s when my team and I got together and started to develop the first generation SmartThings hub and the platform. The first steps that we took were all about experimentation and testing the market. We wanted to see if there were enough people like us, you know, others who wanted to stay connected to the home and to their things and the things that they care about, you know, to give their home a voice and to give it intelligence so that they can more easily interact with it.
SmartThings from the beginning also realized that homes are where individual personalities come out that are as diverse as the human race. And we felt that because of that that promoting openness was really the right approach from the beginning. So our strategy through all this time has been to engage and supports an enthusiastic community of developers and inventors around the world and try to build the first open standards agnostic platform for the Smart Home.
The response to the initial launch was overwhelmingly positive and since then I can only say it’s been a crazy and very rewarding ride. It feels like we’re just still at the beginning but we’ve triggered a tremendous wave of innovation around the world where we’re rapidly adding intelligence to the everyday things that are in our homes.
Now with the scale, the resources and the support of Samsung, we’re going to be able to expand our platform to even more partners, even more devices and create richer experiences for consumers all around the world. While we do that, we’re going to continue to run SmartThings the way we always have. We are embracing a completely open stance, embracing our community of customers, our developers, device makers, all with the current leadership, the entire founding team is joining us on this great road ahead.
So we’ve come so far and it’s in such a short time and we’re really excited for what’s ahead. I just — I can’t wait to show you what’s coming in the future. Thank you.
Boo-Keun Yoon – Present and CEO, Samsung
Thanks, Alex. We will help with our resources and our strategic support to ensure that SmartThings succeeds and grows. We will also ensure that its platform remains open and independent with Samsung as a premier partner. We are very excited to work with SmartThings to revolutionize the Home of the Future and to continue bringing seamless and delightful experiences to all consumers. Thanks for your time, Alex.
Alex Hopkinson – CEO, SmartThings
Thank you.
Boo-Keun Yoon – Present and CEO, Samsung
The opportunities ahead are enormous. By 2018, there will be about 45 million installed smart home systems. Globally the smart home market is expected to be worth US $100 billion by 2018. And after that, in this age or fast forward innovation, it will really take off this home of the future, it will transform much more than just the place where we live. Yes, it will boost the tech industry and will create larger jobs but more than that, think of the ripple effect across our society, more energy efficiency as homes get smarter, more safety as homes are better protected. More independence and peace of mind in old age as healthcare is delivered at home.
Our society that’s more social, more connected even if we live apart, that and much, much more. I have only scratched the surface of what’s possible. By collaborating with industry partners, Samsung will lead and drive this transformation.
This big trend, they are changing Samsung as well. Let me be clear – I don’t want Samsung to be remembered as a technology company. I want us to be remembered for providing unique tailored experiences but to make the Home of the Future truly meaningful, your role will be critical. You have to embrace it. You have to help shape it, or it will remain just a vision.
So it’s time to step up. Together we will bring about the biggest technology leap in the history of innovation. Together we will bring the future home.
[Video Presentation]
Lucy Alexandar – IFA
Ladies and gentlemen, we really hope you had enjoyed this first glance of the Home of the Future and to give you a more in-depth look at Samsung’s vision, we’ve taken all that incredible research and prepared this enchanting book full of rich vivid insights. So please, as you leave, take a copy with you. And don’t forget to visit us upstairs here at CityCube, Berlin. Thank you very much indeed. Enjoy your experience.
